


red, the blood of angry men

by surviving_and_thriving



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: But I Love Them, Gore, Jason Todd Has Issues, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, No proofreading we die like mne, Violence, dick be a better brother challenge, fuck politicians, i have never once learned how to use a comma or a semicolon correctly, so warning for copious comma and semicolon usage and abuse, someone help him, wow i really went ham with the runon sentences here, yikes this is gruesome just fyi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:22:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21884461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surviving_and_thriving/pseuds/surviving_and_thriving
Summary: Jason leaves the Titans, thinking he can make it on his own.  After all, it was never a problem when he lived on Gotham's streets and San Fransisco can't be much worse.Spoiler alert: he's dead wrong.Title and lyrics from Les Misérables
Comments: 11
Kudos: 99





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> y'all. i refuse to believe that jason todd, full of angst and drama, didn't watch a group of hormonal high schoolers singing songs from Les Misérables and not feel something. 
> 
> and "Drink With Me" hits different when you almost die and then people quickly brush past it.
> 
> anyway, jason is haunted by grantaire's verse so i used it to frame this story.

_Will the world remember you when you fall?_  
_Could it be your death means nothing at all?_  
_Is your life just one more lie?_  
Drink with Me, “Les Misérables”

* * *

Jason is, as Rose so eloquently put it when he brought her to the theater that served as his home when he lived on the streets, a “theater nerd.” He would prefer to say he was a “thespian,” but he knows it really isn’t true; he’s a nerd. He’s seen every high school production that school had put on, from “Cats” to “Les Misérables” to “Phantom of the Opera” and he’d actually enjoyed most of them.

But he shakes his head to clear his memory of that line of thought, of Rose. He doesn’t need her and he certainly doesn’t need the Titans. They had made it clear that he wasn’t needed. 

He’d seen them all at the airport, looking complete and whole without him. Well, not entirely, Donna was gone, which was the reason they were at the airport in the first place, the reason he had even shown up. Even though Donna had never been wonderful to him, Jason still hadn’t forgiven her for the orange soda debacle, she didn’t deserve to die. And Jason respected her.

But seeing the Titans standing in a line, united, with Rose fitting in so easily to the spot he had left, the one he had never fully fit into, was the last push Jason needed to say goodbye to the Titans. They had even dealt with Deathstroke, killed him and even saved that Jericho kid, without him. 

Much more than he’d been able to do. 

No, instead of killing Deathstroke as he had planned, he’d gone and gotten kidnapped, which was embarrassing in itself, but then had needed saving from Dick, of all people, and even then it wasn’t enough to fix the situation Jason created. When there was a situation that even Wonder Boy, Dick Grayson, can’t fix, that’s how Jason knew he had really fucked up. Kori had to get involved, and it was really only “fixed” when a literal superperson, Connor, had saved Jason’s sorry ass from dying. 

Yeah, Jason thought, joining the Titans was a big mistake. Staying with them was a bigger mistake. Trusting them was the biggest.

Jason was a fuck-up and it was obvious they worked much better without him.

So seeing them, all of them, without him, solidified his plan. 

He didn’t need Dick, or Nightwing or whatever the hell he was calling himself now, and he didn’t need the Titans and he didn’t need Batman.

He didn’t need anyone.

So Jason left. Spun his motorcycle around on the tarmac and headed out.


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi the actual story starts here :)
> 
> low-key for an implied attempt at sexual assault - nothing actually happens but a man brings a drugged lady into an empty building and jason draws conclusions from that, just fyi

Suicide wasn't _that_ uncommon on the streets of Gotham. Kids would turn stolen guns on themselves all too often, a bullet through the head a much nicer ending than whoever they were running drugs for or whoever they owed money to would have given them. 

And Jason was really considering it right about now. 

He had a gun he’d nicked off a dude in a bar his first night downtown alone. He knew how Gotham operated and he knew how he looked: young and alone. He would be prime real estate for anyone looking.

So he picked up protection. But right now, he almost wanted to turn it on himself. Because even if he was alone, he still fucked up the lives of perfectly happy people.

Like, this afternoon, for example. Jason had been tucked in a corner of one of the abandoned buildings that peppered the outskirts of the city, trying to sleep, when a lady had stumbled in, a man hanging off her.

She had obviously been trying to get him off her and was still trying, but he was pulling her down to the ground. And there was something off about her. Her eyes were all wonky, not really focusing and she was stumbling more than a normal person would, even with a man hanging off her arm. She was drugged and if Jason had any money in his pockets to place a bet with, he would have put money on the fact that the man had drugged her and was looking for a quiet place for an easy score.

Jason tried to be a good person, he did, but he was really trying to keep a low-profile. He didn’t know exactly what would happen if he were to be picked up by the cops and he didn’t want to find out.

But this lady was struggling and she and Jason had locked eyes as she whipped her head around. And her eyes were full of fear. Jason had seen that fear before, in the eyes of the girls who would be pulled in the car of a strange man in the early hours of the morning and never reappear.

So he uncurled himself and shook out his hands, ready for a fight. Almost as an afterthought, he had reached up and yanked the hood of his hoodie up and over his hair and eyes. It wasn’t the Robin mask by any means, but it would help him stay semi-anonymous. 

The man holding the lady had his back to Jason and didn’t notice Jason until he had kicked the man’s legs out from under him. Both the man and woman hit the ground hard, but the man had scrambled up just as fast and had turned to face Jason.

“Oh, you want to fight a big boy now, do you?” the man had asked him, looking Jason up and down, appraising him.

Jason hadn’t bothered with a response, instead launching himself at the man, spinning around to deliver a kick to the man’s side.

The man dodged and swung an elbow into the side of Jason’s head. Jason winced, his vision whiting out for a split-second, before retaliating with a punch of his own, catching the man’s jaw and knocking him back to the ground.

Jason straddled the man before slamming the man’s head against the ground hard enough to knock him out.

In an ideal situation, Jason would’ve killed the man, he deserved it, but bodies get a lot more attention than a man saying he got jumped in an empty building. As long as no one got seriously hurt, the police probably wouldn’t give two shits. They had bigger things to be looking out for.

With the man addressed, Jason had turned around to see if the lady was okay.

He had been a little surprised to see her still on the ground, but he figured that the drugs in her system may have caught up with her body and knocked her out.

He made his way over to her, reaching down on instinct to check her pulse. His own heartbeat skipped a beat when he didn’t feel anything. 

He moved his fingers from her neck to her wrist, searching for a pulse, but came up empty. 

She was gone.

He lifted her head and saw blood caked in her hair and pooled on the floor.

Jason hadn’t thought that the earlier fall was that bad, but the man had landed on top of her and her head must have snapped back at just the right speed to crack her skull and kill her. The drugs in her system probably didn’t help, either.

She was dead and the man was unconscious. 

“So much for a low-profile,” Jason had laughed under his breath.

He really couldn’t risk the man waking up and identifying him to the police, so he made his way back over to the prone body of the man. He picked the man’s head back up and smashed it into the ground a few more times.

He could hear Dick’s voice in the back of his head, chastising him for being too violent, just like with the cops the first time they had met, but Jason shakes the voice and memory out of his head, and, as a fuck you to the invisible voice of Dick, slammed the man’s head into the ground once more.

But now, sitting at the bar of a diner that offered two dollar meals, watching the news, Jason knew he was screwed. 

The man was, as luck would have it, an important man in the community. The man, the news report stated, was Murphy Thurman, a major donor to the favorite candidate in the election for mayor. He owned several businesses and, as the pretty reporter on the screen said, was a “well-respected and beloved member of the city.” 

_And a rapist_ , Jason added, in his mind.

There was almost no mention of the lady Thurman had been with, the news only saying she had no relation to Thurman and the police were looking for any connection between the two, but had, as of right now, not found any.

Which, speaking of police, all of them were involved. There was going to be a full investigation with multiple teams working on the death.

So, yeah, Jason knew he was well and truly fucked. 

He knew that when he was with Bruce or the Titans, he was practically a ghost in the police system, but since he had pretty much walked away from all that protection, Jason wasn’t confident that he was still anonymous. It would make sense for Bruce to cut him off from everything, as Jason had done a pretty good job at convincing him that he wasn’t worth all of Bruce’s troubles. 

If he wasn’t protected by Bruce anymore, then his history back in Gotham wouldn’t be hard to find. The San Francisco police only needed his prints and he would be theirs. 

GCPD had his prints on file and his criminal history. And it was not a pretty history; it was one full of robbery and assault and violence. It’s exactly the type of history that someone who would murder two people in an empty building would have.

If any prints were found or if anyone managed to place him in the area, he’d be found out


	3. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ps. yall, the convo Jason lip-reads for is about the lady working with the mayor to kidnap homeless youth and use them for a nefarious purpose...i don't know if i made it clear enough in the chapter

_“Our city has the seventh-highest rate of crime in the United States. This city suffers at the hands of a select number of special individuals who wreak havoc on San Francisco. When I took office last year, I pledged to this beautiful city of San Francisco to clean up the city and remove this unwanted population. And I am proud to say that one year into my term, the crime rate has dropped significantly. Although there is still room for vast amounts of improvement, as of right now, there are fewer of these unfavorable individuals on our streets. And I plan to continue this trend as this term, and hopefully, subsequent terms, unfold.”_

The mayor finished his speech with a wave and a smile, the applause from the crowd surrounding him. The television made the applause sound all staticy, but Jason could still tell that the crowd was wild for the mayor.

Jason rolled his eyes and took another sip from the milkshake he was currently slouched over, tucked in the corner booth of a run-down diner. 

The elite of any city was always trying to get in the business of the people they considered below them. It was the same in Gotham and it’ll be the same wherever he goes.

Right now, the homeless population of San Francisco was the only reason he was getting food and sleeping. He’d managed to slip into one of the many youth centers that littered the heart of the city and has since survived on the meals they provided and the sugary snack when he had any extra money. 

Jason will admit it to himself and no one else, but he missed cooking desserts with Alfred in the massive kitchen at Wayne Manor. 

More applause draws his attention back to the television. 

The mayor has made his way across the stage and is now shaking hands with a lady who almost blends in with the white marble walls, with her translucent skin and hair. The fact that she stands separated and alone raises the hairs on the back of Jason’s neck, but he can’t exactly place why he feels so unsettled.

The mayor and the creepy lady seem to be having a private conversation that ends with the mayor raising his glass to her and the cock of her eyebrows.

Jason tries to read their lips but only manages to get every few words.

_ “Mr. Mayor...have much...talk” _

_ “...what…” _

_ “...proposal that will benefit...both parties” _

_ “What is it?” _

_ “...high-ranking...unique problem...San Francisco…” _

_ “...homeless…” _

_ “...benefactors…solution to the problem...reducing the homeless...work better as a team…” _

_ “Tell me more.” _

Even without hearing the entire conversation, Jason can tell that something sketchy is going on. 

In the two weeks or so he’s been on the streets, he’s noticed a drop in the number of kids coming back to the youth center each night. He hadn’t taken any notice before, because he had just been so glad there was space for him, but now, after hearing the mayor, it seems a little strange.

Jason had three different roommates in the week-and-a-half he’d been at the youth center and he was currently on his fourth.

While homeless kids are considered a transient population, meaning that the number fluctuated widely, it didn’t seem right for there to be that much turnover in just a few days. 

Jason knew that he needed to keep a low-profile, but God, it didn’t seem right to stand by while yet another sleazy politician used kids like Jason to get ahead. The mayor based his entire re-election campaign on the successful reduction of the homeless population.

And Jason wasn’t going to let him, or the freaky lady in white, get away with it.

* * *

After doing some research (mostly following other kids from the youth center around, unseen and noting which ones didn’t show for dinner that night), Jason had figured that most of the people targeted were on the fringes of an already fringe population. Those who did drugs or had a severe mental illness or were prostitutes. People even some of the other homeless avoided.

So Jason had found a dealer that when people went to him for drugs, they didn’t come back.

It was a stupid plan, but Jason didn’t need anyone else. Dick and the other Titans had been living in San Francisco just as long as Jason, but only Jason had seen this problem. 

This is Jason’s to fix.

He turns the corner to the alleyway his dealer is usually in and sees him. His foot taps on the pavement, and when Jason makes eye contact, he nods to her backpack, his eyebrows raised in a silent question. He nods back, stumbling as he lifts his foot to get the money out of his shoe.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see shadows on the ground approaching him.

Jason clamps down on his natural reflexes to fight and kick, instead going limp and letting whoever was behind him hold a rag up to his face. Chloroform, he notes before his vision starts to fade.

Then he sees black.

* * *

Jason wakes to a sharp pain in his head. He hisses, gritting his teeth then wincing when the action causes pain to flare up the side of his face. He gingerly touches his cheek, and his fingers meet sticky blood.

He’s confused and racks his mind to reorganize his scattered memories. The last thing Jason recalled was walking down the alley.

It all comes crashing back to him in one moment and he takes a minute to compose himself.

_ What would Batman do?  _ he asks himself.

Take inventory and figure out where he is. That’s what Bruce would do.

He sits up to investigate his surroundings and finds he has been dumped against a moist cement wall. He presses his injured cheek to it, relishes in the cool wall against his heated skin.    
He sucks in a harsh breath through his nose and, finally, opens his eyes. 

He surveys his body and is pleased to find that, aside from his head, the rest of his body is relatively unhurt. He has a few minor cuts and bruises from being dragged and dumped, but otherwise, he is fine. 

He's in a cell, that much is obvious, with a mesh-wire door and three cement walls. No windows. No bed. No way out but through the door. He swallows, and frowns as the motion is restricted.

He touches his neck. Around it is a thick piece of plastic, a collar. There's a large box on the side of it. It’s a shock collar meant for dogs, he realizes, horrified. He tugs on the collar, experimentally, and finds that it has no give. 

Jason looks around again. He notices that his cell isn’t as empty as he had first thought. There’s something on the floor, bunched up in the corner. He crawls over to it and sees his red jacket wrapped in a tight knot. When he unwinds it, a knife falls out. It's a skinny and dainty thing, hardly threatening.

A voice crackles to life in his ear, and belatedly he realizes he is wearing an earpiece. 

“Good. You're up,” the voice says. 

The Voice is female, with a hint of an accent, but Jason doesn't recognize the voice or accent. He jerks in surprise but resists the urge to tug at the earpiece. It’s the only form of communication he has, and even if he doesn’t know the speaker, it connects him to another person. 

He doesn’t want to be alone. Even though he signed up for this, purposefully gotten kidnapped and everything, no one  _ wants  _ to be in this situation.

But the Voice does not come back after the greeting.

After a few minutes of silence, he grows tired of doing nothing and walks to the door. He pushes against it and frowns when he finds that it doesn't give; it doesn't open. He continues trying, even attempting to pry the door open with the knife at one point.

Defeated, he slumps back on the floor. Bruce would be disappointed. In his defense, though, he had  _ just _ been knocked out. It’s a little disorientating.

Just as Jason gears up to start trying to escape again, the Voice comes back.

"Do you like games, Jason?" the Voice asks, cooly.

“What the fuck?” he eloquently responds.

_ What kinda Saw shit is this? _ he thinks.

"We've been waiting for you to wake up and join us," she says.

Jason furrows his brow. He looks to the locked door and decides that his best bet for escape is to play along.

Shrugging, "I like games," he says, trying to sound light-hearted. "What are the rules?"

There's a low buzz, and the door finally swings open.

"Simple," the Voice replies. "Survive."

With that, the Voice vanishes again, leaving him alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im a hoe for comments, yall, let me know what you think :))))
> 
> happy 2020, btw!


	4. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> man, i told y'all it was gonna get gory. sorry in advance. hope you like the chapter though! 
> 
> sorry for the delay in updating, college started back again and i'm working on applying to internships, as well as school, so i'm a little busy. don't worry, i've got the next few chapters written, so hopefully, it won't take too long to revise them for posting :)

Jason swallows and peers around the doorframe. The outside is terrifyingly dark. The utter blackness is kept at bay by a small red light blinking, illuminating a long, wet-looking hallway. It blinks like a heartbeat: steady, slow, constant. 

Slowly, he creeps into the hallway, holding his meager knife out in front of him for protection. His nerves are fried, and he’s twitchy, jumping at every single small noise. Bruce would kill him if he could see Jason now, freaked out by a little kidnapping. It’s not like this was even  _ that _ unexpected, Jason basically signed up for this. 

He reaches the end of the hallway without any incident, and when he’s faced with another door, it opens with a buzz. No hesitation this time and no not-so-helpful tips from the Voice.

He's let into another room. It’s different than his cell. The room is large with nets and boxes scattered about. Years of playing the fanciest video games Burce’s money could buy tell him to rifle through the boxes to look for a better weapon.

The silence weighs on Jason, and he clears his throat and begins to talk aloud to distract himself.

“This is fine, Jason, pull yourself together and get on with it. Someone has to figure out what’s going on.”

There’s crackling in his ear as the Voice comes back to life.

The Voice laughs in his ear, “They'll figure it out when they find you, one way or another."

Jason tries not to think too hard about what that implies. Bruce probably wouldn’t care if he died alone in a warehouse because of some stupid stunt he pulled, but, in all honesty, he doesn’t really want to be found as a body. 

He continues searching through the boxes, his body freezing when he hears another door open and something shuffling inside. 

"Focus, Jason,” the Voice implores in his ear. She sounds almost encouraging. “The game's about to start."

_ Oh, what the actual fuck does that mean _ , he thinks before slowly turning around.

A shadow passes in front of Jason, and he ducks behind a box with a curse as a bullet flies over his head and strikes the box behind him. He scrambles back into the shadows, deciding that he needed more information before attacking (or running, depending on who it was out there).

Jason feels a shock course through his body. He drops his knife at the sudden onset of pain. His fingers claw at his neck and he wants to scream, but he needs to stay silent and hidden, so he screws his eyes shut and waits for the pain to pass.

“Fight, Jason,” the Voice says. “Do not hide.”

The shock stops as soon as Jason reaches for his knife.

He nods, forcing his heart to slow, suddenly very grateful for all the training Bruce had put him through, listening intently to the other person as the figure moves between the shelves. He crawls towards the door, chancing a look over the box. He catches a glimpse of dark hair and slim, pale shoulders, before the person whirls and shoots at him again.

"Please," the other person pleads. It's a girl, and she sounds like a child. "I don't wanna play this game anymore. I don't want to play!"

She cocks her head, and Jason guesses she is listening to her own Voice that he can’t hear.

She tearfully nods before leveling her gun at Jason and firing.

He ducks down again and crawls away under a barrage of bullets.

Jason slinks around the shelf and spots another door. It leads to another room, this one well-lit and looking uncomfortably like a medical office, with linoleum floors already soaked with a sickening amount of blood. 

He bolts for the door, frantic for escape. He doesn’t want to kill this girl, and he’s pretty sure he can outrun her. 

It’s obvious that she is incompetent with the gun, but she gets off a lucky shot that catches his shoulder, spinning him around before he hits the floor. He cries out when he hits the ground, crawling just inside the doorframe. 

He can hear her quiet, “yes” in celebration before he sees her shadow stretching long at his side. He slumps to the ground, pretending to be dead, and takes a deep breath. 

Watches.

Waits.

The tip of the gun nudges his shoulder, and he stays limp. Her hand comes next, pushing against him, checking to see if he is truly dead. 

While she isn’t paying attention, Jason surges up and knocks her gun lose. He grabs a handful of her short, dark hair, throws her to the ground, and wraps his hands around her throat and squeezes, squeezes, squeezes until she stops moving, unconscious. 

He tries to stop after that, not wanting to kill her, but a surge of electricity goes through his body, locking his hands around her neck until she is dead. 

The electricity lets up, and he collapses to the side, panting, still writing from the effects of the shock.

“Why?” he manages to get out.

The Voice laughs before responding.

“Because I want to win.”

Jason doesn’t even know how to respond, so he looks at the body of the girl he had just killed. Oh, god. The body of the girl he had just  _ killed _ . Jason had no problems with killing, unlike Bruce’s precious Dickie, but only those who deserved it. And the girl did  _ not  _ deserve it.

He sees the mesh shirt, the short skirt, the garish makeup. Jason doesn’t know her, but he knows her type. Teenage girls kicked out of their homes forced to do something, anything to get money to eat. They live on the streets, sleeping wherever, sleeping next to junkies. Gotham had plenty of them. Every city does.

He shudders and stands up. He turns to face the new room, only to jump with fright when the door to the storage room slammed closed behind him. He spins around and tries to open it, but it remains locked. 

There’s a buzz, and a door on the far side of the room opens. Jason grabs the gun off the body by his feet and aims at the open door. Bruce had, emphatically, told him that Batman never uses guns, so Robin wouldn’t either. 

_ Fuck it _ , Jason thinks. Jason Todd uses guns.

No one enters through the door for a long minute, but Jason doesn’t want to move. He knows this room and is more comfortable here than in the hallway that stretches out after the door. Every breath Jason takes echoes around the room. 

Then, in a flurry of action, a man throws himself into the room, surprising Jason. He fires the gun wildly, but he’s not a great shot (no Robin training for guns), and none of the bullets get close.

The man has wild eyes and keeps yelling at Jason to escape, that the demons will come for him and the angels won’t be able to protect them all. He has a long machete that he swings around haphazardly as he screams nonsense and manages to slice a deep wound into Jason’s side before Jason can grab him. 

_ Jesus _ , Jason thinks,  _ and I thought Gotham had a monopoly on crazy. _

The man gets his hands around Jason’s throat and before Jason can even think he has the gun under the man’s jaw and the trigger has been pulled. 

Jason looks him in the eyes as the man dies. He's old, older than Jason, and much older than the girl in the other room, and he looks up at Jason with wide eyes, like he is an avenging angel. The look is frozen on his face as he dies. 

Jason doesn’t know this body either, but he’s seen enough people with mental illness on the streets to know he was just another vagrant.

Jason wonders if the mental health care here is as bad as it is in Gotham, with fundings cut and people released from wards before they’re ready. From the look of the man, he assumes it is.

"You're doing such a good job, Jason," his Voice says warmly. She sounds like she's smiling.

“Fuck off,” he responds. He doesn’t want any praise for killing people.

Nevertheless, he moves to open the door to the next room. His hands, shaking with adrenaline and covered in blood, freeze on the door and Jason takes a small breath to ground himself when he sees them.

“Keep going, Jason,” his Voice says. “You must keep going.”

_ Don’t keep going for the Voice _ , Jason thinks,  _ keep going for all the kids going missing. Keep going so you can figure this out. Keep going so you get out of this alive and can bring whoever is behind this to justice.  _

He opens the door and walks down another long, long hallway before entering a new room. 

It is set up like a miniature concert hall, with plush chairs covered in red velvet facing towards a single stage, no larger than what might fit three or four performers. There is already a body in this room. 

The body is on stage, a man sitting in a chair. His head is tilted back, and his body has been slit from throat to belly.    
  


There’s a pipe shoved down his throat. Bruce had taken Jason to the opera once, trying to make him one of the cultured Gothamite elite Bruce surrounded himself with, but Jason had fallen asleep halfway through. But he did know what a cello looked like.

The victim’s body is posed in a cruel mimicry of an instrument. It's not a cello, not like the real thing, but it's close. It’s horrifying.

He has track marks running down both of his arms. Jason wonders if the man in the chair visited the same dealer he did for drugs. Maybe that’s why they both ended up here.

Jason turns away from the sight, wincing as he puts his hand to his side, his body deciding that now was a good time to remind him he had been shot and slashed. 

There’s no time to dwell on his injuries, however, and beyond pressing his shirt a little closer to his side, Jason doesn’t have much to staunch the blood flow that is sluggishly seeping out of the wounds. He has to just finish this hell-game, then maybe he can get some help.

As Jason makes his way across the room, his eyes dart around as he looks for the man’s killer. 

He feels eyes on him. Jason is too exposed. He shudders and looks around. The folds in the curtains could easily hide a man. They reach the floor, a deep red velvet, the color of the blood. The color decorating the man’s chest and Jason’s hands.

He turns around and eyes the seats. They are empty. 

He still feels watched. 

He leaves the amphitheater, finding another hallway lit by a pulsing red light. He stays alert as he slides along the wall, his eyes, and ears trained sharply for movement as he moves down it.

"How many are left?" Jason asks, whisper-soft.

"Three," comes the reply, "including you."

He hears a loud bang, a scream, and then silence.

Very quietly, the Voice says, "Now two. One last kill and you’re free."

Without warning, a shock shakes his body. Jason clenches his jaw and falls to his knees. The action jars his injured side and shoulder, and he lets out a small cry. He claws at the collar. He wants to tear the thing off. It feels like it's cutting off his air. He can't breathe. He wonders if this is how the girl felt when he killed her.

The shock shuts off, and Jason relaxes.

"What the fuck was that for?" he demands. "I'm doing what you want."

The Voice laughs, the sound high and hysterical. 

"It's not specific to people," she tells him. "Everyone feels the shock."

“Why?” he wines. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

“You all deserve punishment. You have all wasted your lives,” his Voice says.

Jason considers this as he continues down the hallway. Everyone he had encountered so far had been someone who probably lived on the streets. Everyone had, according to high-society, wasted their life, dedicating it to drugs or sex or alcohol or violence instead of school or work.

But why were these people being targeted for whatever torture this “game” was, Jason wondered? 

That’s what he needed to figure out. And who was calling the shots behind this whole operation?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> once again, i crave that serotonin release that i get when one of y'all comments on this! thanks for all the lovely words y'all have given me already. i appreciate and love you all :)


	5. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, again pals! I hope y'all all had a decent last week because I sure as hell did not! College is handing me my ass in a handbasket (never double major and triple minor hahaha). I'm working on the next chapter, but no guarantees for how fast it comes out.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me so far. I hope y'all aren't bored with the story yet because I still have so much planned.
> 
> As always, I am a slut for comments/kudos, so tell me what you think :)

Jason emerges into another room. It’s dark, darker than any other room had been. Jason frowns and presses his back to the wall just inside the threshold and winces when bright, blinding lights flare to life.

He ducks his head with a curse, blinking rapidly to try to get them to adjust. Then, he freezes as a gunshot rings out. It's loud, echoing along the hallways, back the way he'd come.

He turns, sucking in a breath, his heart in his throat.

He rushes back down the hallway, half-blind, crouched over and feeling his way along the walls. Something gives in the wall, a door that wasn't there before, and he falls into another room. This one is lit with mustard-yellow lights decorated with canvases and tarps that throw sharp shadows. 

Then, he hears a sound. It's the low, rumbling snarl of an animal, and Jason straightens, his hand grabbing his gun, but before he can raise it, sharp pain explodes in his face. A huge beast of a man lunges against him, throwing him to the ground. His brain registers that the pain in his cheek and jaw was caused by a knife. His mouth floods with blood as the knife is yanked out, and Jason scampers away.

The man is very tall, his eyes wild and the collar around his throat slick with blood. He bares his teeth in a bloody snarl. He has a knife in one hand, the other hangs limp, clearly broken, and his shirt is torn open, revealing flesh cut down to the bone. Jason grasps his cheek weakly, lightheaded from the pain and distantly he can hear the Voice frantically crying out for him to get up and fight. 

_ It’s funny _ , he thinks in his lightheadedness, _ the Voice sounds a little like what Bruce sounds like when Jason gets hurt on patrol _ .

The man lunges for Jason again, and Jason flinches and yelps as he ends up entangled in a sheet of canvas. It falls, covering him and robbing him of sight. He throws the canvas off, and the man surges forward again, swiping wildly with the knife. 

Jason dodges it, wincing as the blade sinks into his forearm, and his fingers twitch, dropping his gun. He manages to catch it with his other hand and shoves it to the man’s thigh, shooting him where the meat is thick. 

The man howls and falls to his knees. Jason rises. He tries to shoot the man again, but the gun is empty. He throws the useless weapon aside and rushes the man, ducking low as the man swipes with his knife. Jason jumps on his back, tackling him to the ground and swiping his tiny knife across the man’s throat. 

It only takes one thin line. Blood spills out in a slick pile as the man shudders, goes still, and crumples. 

Jason stumbles back, breathing heavily, hands shaking. Blood decorates the floor, from both Jason and the man. It’s bright and thick, soaking into the canvas beneath their feet, staining it like fresh art.

Jason stands, light with blood loss and adrenaline. 

“Well done, Jason,” his Voice congratulates. “Find your way out, and we’ll talk.”

Jason turns his head, spits out a wad of bloody saliva onto the man’s dead body and makes his way out of the room. 

He rips a piece of the tarp up from the ground to wrap around his arm and crumples up another section to press against the cut in his cheek. He's going to have some pretty nasty-ass scars after this whole thing.

He passes more corridors, the red lights the only illumination. He passes the entrance of another room. Jason sees a body there, torn to shreds. It looks like the animal-like man’s work.

Another room, this one set up as a dining room, luxuriously furnished. Sees a body on the table, ribs cracked open, heart and lungs exposed. Stomach and guts removed, splattering the floor. He shivers and continues to walk.

Another room, set up like a library, books covered in dust, body lying on the floor. Another in a room resembling a bathroom.

He finds his way into a circular room that is lit with harsh white lights and is impeccably clean. Except for the body decorating the floor. There is a woman on her stomach with her head tilted up, her eyes staring blankly at the door. Her back has been skinned, exposing her spine and the flesh of her ribs, her back peeled into two segments resembling wings flat on either side of her.

"I killed a man who spoke of angels," Jason says.

“His first victim,” the Voice states. “Keep moving.”

Jason looks away, wondering how he had gotten away from Gotham only to be shoved into a city even more insane.

When Jason finally emerges from the concrete maze, he finds himself in a room filled with video screens playing his actions from the past hour. 

A lady in a sleek outfit enters the room, her heels clicking against the floor. Although her white-blonde hair and pale skin seem to match the colorless room they are in, her tight black dress and bright red lipstick make her stand out. She looks too clean to be here. 

Jason recognizes her from the television back at the diner. She’s the lady who had been speaking to the mayor.

“Congratulations, Jason,” she says, and Jason is taken aback. She is the Voice. The one he heard throughout the game. 

“Why did I have to do that?” he asks, “Why did you make me do that?”

He tries to keep his tone neutral. Jason just wants a fucking answer for why he had to kill his way through some twisted gauntlet, why there were so many homeless bodies decorating the floor, and why no one was doing anything about it.

She ignores his question and continues with her little speech.

“Now, as you can see,” she gestured to the screen behind her, “we have video evidence of the crimes you have just committed. We have a skilled editor who can alter these tapes to look like you were a crazed drug addict on a rampage. And we can send those tapes to the police. Killing multiple people is a capital offense and, seeing as we are in California, you will likely face the death penalty.”

_ Oh, for fuck's sake _ , Jason thinks. 

“Or,” the lady continued, “you can join us. We look for the most resilient people. The ones who will do whatever it takes. Is that you?”

Jason furrowed his eyebrows. 

_ Play dumb _ , he thinks,  _ get more information and do whatever it takes to get the hell out of here _ .

“I mean,” he begins, “what would I be doing?”

She motioned to herself.

“What I do,” she said.

“Which is what, exactly?” he asks.

“We work as contracted killers for people who want to watch others suffer. The most basic human desire is entertainment, so we find people like you, people who won’t be missed, and then people pay to watch you fight. It’s cathartic,” she replied.

“No one ever looks for the people you take?” 

“Never. No one misses a prostitute, druggie, or dealer. We have been running games like this for over three years, and only five missing persons reports have been filed. There was no outcry about the disappearances, and the police never looked into the cases more. In fact, people rejoice when the numbers of you people drop. Looks very good for politics.”

She pauses, looking at Jason. 

“So, are you in? Or shall I call the police?”


	6. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow! i! am! the! worst!
> 
> sorry, it has literally been over a month, y'all. school has kicked my ass, then swim season ended, then this whole covid-19 thing happened.
> 
> this isn't real, we are living in a simulation.
> 
> anyway, I hope this helps quell some of the boredom that quarantine causes.
> 
> stay safe and healthy, babes

Jason blinks hard when he’s thrust back outside. The darkness of the hallways and the artificial lighting of the room with all the video had done nothing to orient him to what time it was outside. Which was, apparently, the middle of the day.

Which day, however, Jason wasn’t sure of. He knew he couldn’t have been in the game, or whatever the creepy called it, for more than a few hours, but he had no way of knowing how long he had been out before then. 

Jason’s head, when he had woken up, hadn’t been super fuzzy, so he was probably only in the game for a day or two, max. He wasn’t hungry when he woke up to have been in there longer.

Now, however, he was  _ starving _ . 

But he couldn’t go get food just yet.

The man who threw him outside the warehouse was glaring at him, which Jason took to mean that he needed to get a move on and scurry away.

He shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie and feels the smooth curve of the emergency button the lady gave him before he was pushed outside. Jason is supposed to use it “when he needs assistance and someone will be there to help him almost immediately.” Essentially, it’s a remote-controlled tracker; he activates it and the lady and whoever she sends after him, can find him in seconds. 

It makes his blood boil.

He pushes the button deeper into his pocket and begins to walk away from the building.

Jason slouches, wanting to look nonchalant, but, on the inside, he is paying attention to the details surrounding him. 

He takes note of the buildings surrounding the one that houses the game. He notices that there aren’t any major roads around; he is walking on a well-worn dirt path. He wants to look at the horizon to try and figure out exactly where he was in relation to the city, but he can  _ feel _ the eyes of the man on his back and Jason just really isn’t in the mood for any more fighting.

So he keeps his head down and trudges towards the highway.

When he is finally out of the sight of the building and the man, he lets all the tension drop from his shoulders. He sinks to the ground, leaning against the leg of a road sign, and fists his hands in his hair. 

He is in way over his head; this is too much.

That lady, the one who seemed to orchestrate the game, is on tier with the crazies from Gotham. Jason doesn’t think he could do this alone.

He needs Bruce or Dick or  _ someone _ .

But, and he had to laugh to himself, the only time he wants to call for help, he has no way to do so. The lady had taken his cellphone (he had checked the pockets of his hoodie when she gave it back to him), he had dug his own tracker out after the whole Deathstroke debacle, so, unless Bruce had secretly planted more in him, he is totally alone.

All he had is the tracker from the people he definitely did not want to see anytime soon.

Fuck.

Jason pushes himself off the ground and begins his long, long trek back to the city. When he had finally glanced up to look at the horizon, he had been greeted with the horrifying sight of a tiny dot of a city.

He has a lot of walking to do.

_ Fuck. _

By Jason’s estimations, he is about halfway back to the city before the world starts blurring in front of his eyes.

It’s hot. And dry. And Jason is not even remotely close to being okay.

He hurts where he got hit during the game. He’s still losing blood. And he’s hungry and thirsty.

It makes sense that the world is tipping on its axis, but Jason’s addled brain could not figure out why he was suddenly on his hands and knees.

He looks down at his hands and is almost shocked to see the sand blowing over them. There are also four hands and, even in his altered state, he knows that was at least one too many hands.

He snorts out a little laugh; this literally is not happening.

He is not going to die of dehydration on the side of the fucking highway in California. He is not going to die alone, the sand blowing over his forgotten corpse. He is  _ not _ going to die without saying goodbye to anyone.

Except, he probably is.

Because, no matter which way Jason thought through the outcomes, there is no good ending.

He can push the emergency button, calling the lady and her men to his location and lose any sort of anonymity in the city he had been hoping to reestablish and probably get killed by them eventually. Or, he cannot push the button and die right here, right now.

_ Goddamn _ , he wants Bruce.

Almost dying had been bad enough the first time, the wind whipping around him as he fell. This time, though, he was firmly on the ground and he is  _ still _ going to die.

His arms, tired from holding him up, give out and Jason collapses, curling into himself as he laughs to himself.

This is it.

Jason manages to roll himself over so he is looking at the sky. A face full of dirt is not how he wants to spend his last moments.

But, as the sky started to fade, Jason feels a panic well up inside his chest.

He doesn't want to die.

His fingers fumble around inside his jacket. He has long since shed his jacket, but now he is scrabbling in it, looking for the emergency button.

He slams his finger down on it right before the darkness overtakes his vision.

Jason doesn’t even have time to weigh the consequences of pushing the button before he falls to the ground again, his eyes sliding shut.

When he opens his eyes again, much later and in a sterile hospital room, he isn’t surprised to see the lady sitting next to him, sipping on a glass of water.

When she realizes Jason is awake, she raises a hand, signaling a doctor to come over and check him out. She never breaks eye contact.

When the doctor clears him, the lady slips the woman a wad of cash before ushering him outside and into a black car.

After the car pulls away from the hospital, she begins talking.

“Well, Jason,” she starts, “You’ve passed our first test. Congratulations.”

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“The emergency button, dear. The walk from the warehouse back to San Francisco is almost impossible even if you’re fully healthy. And you, Jason, were not fully healthy.”

“But what does that have to do with a test?”

“If someone pushes the button, we know they trust us to come to save them. If not, they’d rather die than accept our help. And we don’t want to work with anyone who would rather die than trust us.”

“And I passed?”

“Yes, Jason, you did. Although you did push it a little closer than others, you did pass.”

“So what does that mean?”

“Well, you agreed back at the warehouse to work with us as a street dealer. We did something for you, saving your life, so now you do something for us. We’re playing a new game tomorrow and we need players.”

The car rolls to a stop. 

The lady reaches over Jason to open the door and pushes him out of the car. She passes him a syringe and a backpack.

“I want a girl. Push your button when you’re done.”

She goes to slam the door, before remembering something to add.

“Oh, and we gave you a little gift in your neck.”

Jason’s hand flies to the side of his neck and can just barely feel the raised line of an implant. 

“It’s a little something we’ve been developing for a while. If you fuck up, and you will, all you homeless do eventually, a nice little bomb will go off, killing you instantly. You’ll notice it’s right atop your artery, dear. When we do set it off, it’ll look like you crossed paths with a bullet. A nice, easy explanation as you homeless often get into trouble.”

“Like the fucking Suicide Squad,” Jason mumbles to himself.

The lady picks up on his hushed voice.

“Exactly! One of my friends managed to get us the same technology. We simply adapted it. Since you’re so familiar with it, you must know to never fuck up.”

She slams the door and the car pulls off, leaving Jason alone in a part of the city he does not recognize.

He leans against the wall of the alley, slipping the syringe into his pocket and dropping the backpack at his feet. He opens the bag and is greeted by drugs.

He hopes the cops don’t show up.

It doesn’t take long before he has a customer. 

The girl’s hands are shaking when she rounds the corner. 

Jason wonders what she’s sacrificing to have the money get these drugs. He wonders what her particular brand of poison is. It doesn’t matter. She isn’t going to get what she craves today.

The girl looks at Jason and he does his best to look professional, motioning to the bag at his feet with a questioning look. 

She smiles and walks over, the money outstretched in her hand. She must be new to the streets; she shouldn’t keep her money out in the open like that.

She doesn’t even see the syringe Jason jabs into her neck.

Jason catches her when she falls so she doesn't hit her head on the ground.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers into her hair, his hand reaching into his pocket to push the button, “I’m so sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, thank you all so much for your kind words on my chapter. i am so so so sorry it has taken me so long to update.
> 
> i love hearing what y'all think :)))


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